


you pick me up and take me home again

by and_hera



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Dreams, I Love Adam Parrish, Kissing, M/M, Pre-Call Down the Hawk, The Barns, The Barns (Raven Cycle), The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Trees, excessive figurative language, excessive internal monologues, excessive symbolism, so does ronan lynch btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23151709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: When Adam thinks of the Barns, he thinks of the outdoors. He thinks of birds singing the house awake and he thinks of a child running through the house laughing, and the birds that wake you are always the same birds, and that child is always a child. There is no change, no discomfort, only life and beauty and the smell of spring in the air.When Adam thinks of himself, he does not think of these things.or, Adam Parrish dreams of trees and thinks about home.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	you pick me up and take me home again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kevindayisbi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kevindayisbi/gifts).



> god call me blue sargent because i am a little in love with all those raven boys  
> anyway stan adam parrish stan ronan lynch we all need a little adam pov in our lives to keep us going with all the shit that's going on  
> everyone stay safe! make sure to stay as healthy as you can and social distance if you can! love you all <3  
> title from 400 lux by lorde (in her album pure heroine which is such a trc album)  
> and this is dedicated to lexie bc i love her! i hope ur doing well! all my love to u

When Adam Parrish dreams, he dreams of trees.

There are many different trees. On some nights, he is walking through Cabeswater, feeling the rough of tree bark on the pads of his fingers as he walks past, looking up and just barely seeing the tops of the branches, their green dipping into the blue of the sky. On some nights, he is sitting in the yard at the trailer park, looking at the dying apple tree in the backyard, wondering if this is the year it will maybe produce fruit and knowing that it will not. On some nights, he is leaning out the window of St. Agnes, just able to brush a leaf of the sturdy oak outside the building, wondering if he could just inch out the window a little farther and feel the wind kissing his cheeks and the green against his hands and the sun warming his nose.

On some nights, he is in a forest he does not know. It is like Cabeswater, a little, and it is beautiful. On these nights, Ronan is with him. He hears laughter and wonders if Opal is nearby, too, picking strawberries and squishing them in her grubby hands. On these nights, he does not know where he is, exactly, but it feels like magic. It feels like home.

And when he wakes, there are two possibilities as to where he is. He might be at St. Agnes, his back aching no less than it did when he went to sleep, almost knocking his head on the slanted ceiling as he sits up. Or, the more frequent and likely option nowadays, he is at the Barns. The air is fresh and cool and there is someone beside him, warm and solid and telling him “Jesus fuck, Parrish, it’s too early to be getting up” or not saying anything at all, just grabbing his arm and pulling him back down to the bed.

Today it is the latter possibility, and Adam is content to lay down just a few minutes more.

“You know,” he murmurs, tracing Ronan’s tattoo with his index finger like he traced the patterns of bark on trees in his dream, “if you didn’t want to wake up so early, you could invest in a set of blinds. Or curtains. And the sun wouldn’t wake you up.”

“Bold of you to assume I invest in anything,” he replies messily, his words all strung together. He rolls over to face him and kisses Adam’s knuckles. 

“You could even just switch to a room with a window that does not face east,” Adam continues, closing his eyes.

“Too much work,” he replies messily again, but less so. He holds Adam’s hand loosely, playing with his fingers. “Good morning,” he says nicely.

“Is it?” Adam asks, just to be contrary. Ronan scrunches his nose and rolls over again, untangling his legs from Adam’s to stand up. He stretches, and Adam does not have to stop himself from looking at the way the ink on his back stretches with him, the way he wakes up.

Adam has always been an observer; Adam has always been good at not being noticed. It is strange to not have to look away quickly. It is strange to meet Ronan’s eyes and not feel as though he did not do his job correctly, did not hide himself away fast enough. It is strange to be able to look at Ronan and know that all this time, Ronan has been watching him in the same way Adam watches him now.

“You coming, Parrish,” Ronan says, not really asking, and he pulls on a haphazard black shirt from the floor as he leaves Adam half-sitting up on the bed. 

“You’re the one who didn’t let me get up,” he calls back, and Adam hears a laugh from the hallway. He rolls off the bed and follows, his bare feet brushing the wood floor, Ronan’s pajama pants hanging loose around his ankles.

The Barns is a complicated place for Adam Parrishes to be. Adam Parrishes do not do well with other people’s homes, and they do not do well with their own homes. The Barns is a strange combination of both. Ronan’s home and his maybe-home. Two very different things. And somehow the same.

When Adam thinks of the Barns, he thinks of the outdoors. He thinks of birds singing the house awake and he thinks of a child running through the house laughing, and the birds that wake you are always the same birds, and that child is always a child. There is no change, no discomfort, only life and beauty and the smell of spring in the air.

When Adam thinks of himself, he does not think of these things.

So he has always felt odd at the Barns, as if he should belong but he feels like he doesn’t, or as if he shouldn’t belong but he feels like he does. There is magic pulsing through the place but not that of the ley line, and he never quite fits into the puzzle of the place, a misplaced sepia stroke in a painting of green and gold.

He walks into the kitchen, sees Opal sitting at the counter, gnawing on a book. Adam takes it from her hands and replaces it with the first available thing that is not a book or valuable, which happens to be a pen. “Lynch,” he says, doing a good impression of being stern, leaning across the counter to look at Ronan, “get your child under control. She was eating-” he looks at the book- “the Aeneid. Why do you have the Aeneid out? We translated it last year.”

“Well,” Ronan says, raising his eyebrows at Adam, playing with the bands looped easily around his wrist, “I want you to remember one time I ever went to class.”

“If it was Latin, almost three times a week, consistently.”

“Did I also mention that I was taking care of a raven and worrying about dreamshit and Ganseyshit.”

“Was I not?”

“I didn’t care about school, though.”

“You got me there.”

Ronan leans across the counter and meets Adam halfway, kissing him. “Really,” he says, “I’m using it to see if Opal can get me to remember the dreamshit-language and then see if I can translate from Latin to dreams.”

“When did you decide this?” Adam asks, his nose bumping against Ronan’s. He kisses him again.

“Last night, while you were in the shower.”

“Oh? And what does Opal think of all this?”

Adam sees Ronan’s grin get shoved away, Opal kneeling on her chair to reach high enough. “I don’t want to,” she says, stubbornly. “Kerah knows it.”

“That’s not my name,” Ronan says, like they’ve had this conversation before, since they have, “and I don’t know it. I only remember it in dreams.”

Opal pouts, stubbornly. She clings to Adam’s arm. Adam thinks that he has somehow developed a fondness for this feral not-child who eats fence posts and dirt, and that he somehow doesn’t mind it.

“What are you making for breakfast?” Adam asks. 

“What am I, a housewife?” Ronan asks in turn, already moving to the fridge. “Eggs,” he answers, taking the carton and putting them on the counter. “Scrambled.”

“You know deviled are better.”

“Does it look like I give a shit?”

Adam knows he’ll make them deviled. He finally walks around the counter, pressing a kiss to Ronan’s neck as he leans over him, looking at the eggs.

“Did you dream?” Adam asks, quieter. “I didn’t see anything when I woke up.”

Ronan doesn’t react, which means he either did not dream and he wanted to or he did dream and was ashamed by the result.

Adam kisses his neck again and moves on, letting him have his silence. He makes coffee, and he drinks it while it’s too warm. His tongue stings.

The house is quiet. It is not one of those quietloud places, where even in dead silence the whole room seems to scream. Quietloud places seem to always have action movie music playing somewhere in the air, and you can’t  _ hear  _ it, but you know it’s there. 

The Barns is quiet, though. It is quiet in a way that Adam has never known, really, but oh how he wants to know it.

Ronan says, “I dreamed,” and Adam turns to look at him. Ronan hasn’t been paying attention to what he is doing, because the eggs are burning. Adam doesn’t break eye contact but he turns off the stove. “I dreamed,” he says again, quiet. 

Adam has also learned that for all of Ronan’s posturing, all of his shouting and swearing and sprawling limbs, he is quiet on the inside. Ronan and the Barns match, in the kind of way that Ronan’s insides look like its outsides, in the way that Ronan’s quiet is echoed in its stillness.

Adam thinks that Ronan is scared of his own secret-quiet, a little, so he doesn’t think about it. Adam doesn’t mind, though. He knows how it is to be unknowable to yourself.

“What did you dream of?” Adam asks.

“The Barns,” Ronan says.

“Don’t you get enough of the place in real life?”

Ronan pulls a thing from the pocket of his pajama pants, something small clenched tightly in his fist. Adam reaches and unravels his fingers. Oh.

It’s a key. He knows it will fit in the front door of the Barns.

“Stay,” Ronan says. 

“I’m already here,” Adam says, but he knows what Ronan means.

“Don’t go back to St. Agnes,” Ronan says. “Don’t go back to sleep.”

“I’m awake,” Adam says.

“Stay, Adam.”

Perhaps, Adam thinks, a sepia brush accidentally dripping onto the green and gold masterpiece does not have to be a bad thing. Perhaps, Adam thinks, it could turn into something new. Perhaps, Adam thinks, it could be made into something beautiful.

“I will,” he says. “I’ll stay.”

He takes the key from Ronan, brushes his fingers over the grooves and presses the teeth into his thumb. It’s black, and it doesn’t really look like what keys look like, but somehow it looks like Ronan, so Adam thinks it’s beautiful.

Ronan puts his fingers on Adam’s chin, and Adam kisses him again, because it is not something that can be done too many times. “The trees here are beautiful,” Adam says. “Of course I want to stay.”

Ronan smiles against his lips. “Not for any other reason?” he asks.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Fuck you, Parrish.”

“A minute ago it was ‘Adam.’”

“It definitely was not.”

“It’s okay, Ronan,” Adam says, and Ronan stretches an arm to turn the stove back on, not breaking their gaze. “I’ll help you redo the eggs,” Adam says.

“I don’t want your help. You literally burn ramen, shithead.”

“I thought the crusty bit at the bottom of it was supposed to be there-”

“Well, you thought wrong!” Ronan says, his voice loud and laughing like it normally is, and Adam laughs along. He is in love with this morning.

“I’ll help you anyway,” Adam says decisively, and Ronan rolls his eyes. “Maybe I won’t burn something this time.”

Ronan looks him dead in the eyes. “If you burn the eggs,” he says, “I’m taking that goddamn key back.”

Adam smiles and takes the ruined eggs off the oven. “Sure,” he says, and he kisses Ronan on the cheek. 

Adam Parrish learns to make eggs. He burns a few. Ronan does not take the key back.

He will be okay, he thinks to himself. He will learn to live here. Adam will make a piece of this place his like Ronan makes a piece of it his. He will be okay.

The next time he dreams, he dreams of that new place, the one without a name, yet. The one that acts like Cabeswater. And Ronan is next to him, like he is as in real life as they sleep. Adam smiles at him. The trees are tall enough to bump the sun as it makes its way across the sky.

Adam links his fingers through Ronan’s instead of tracing the trees and the air is so fresh and he is home.


End file.
